1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for managing bookmark folders. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for storing paths to bookmarks in a bookmark folder.
2. Description of Related Art
As is well known by now, the World Wide Web (WWW) or Internet is a system of servers that support documents formatted in Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). HTML supports links to documents as well as to graphics, audio and video files. Links are references to documents from within other documents. Links allow a user to easily jump from one document or Web page to another with just a click of a mouse. Thus, a link is a very useful Internet navigational tool.
Another useful Internet navigational tool is a bookmark. A bookmark is a feature that is available in most Web browsers that allows a user to save addresses or URLs (abbreviation for Uniform Resource locators) of web pages into a folder (i.e., a bookmark folder) for later re-visitation. A web browser is a software application that is used to locate and display web pages. U.S. Pat. No. 6,037,944 issued to Himmel et al. and entitled NAMED BOOKMARK SETS as well as U.S. Pat. No. 6,208,995 B1 issued to the same inventors and entitled WEB BROWSER DOWNLOAD OF BOOKMARK SET describe how a bookmark is downloaded into a bookmark folder. The description in both patents is herein incorporated.
When a user accesses a Web page that may later be re-visited, the user may bookmark the page. There may be instances, however, when it may be convenient to bookmark not only a Web page but also a path that led to the Web page. For example, suppose that through links from a series of displayed Web pages, the user arrived at the Web page that will ultimately be bookmarked. Suppose further that while at the page to be bookmarked, it occurs to the user that the previously displayed pages, from which the page to be bookmarked emanated, contain information relevant enough to warrant a re-visitation at a later date. Then the user may want to bookmark these pages also.
Presently, when a user wants to bookmark a string of previously displayed Web pages from which a currently displayed page emanates, the user has to re-access every single one of these Web pages to bookmark them. Obviously, depending on the number in the string of previously displayed Web pages to be bookmarked, this can be a very time consuming endeavor.
Hence, what is needed is a method and apparatus that allow a user to bookmark a Web page including previously displayed Web pages from which it emanates.